What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Нова Загора in Bulgaria
- Latitude
- 42.1°–43.0° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 154 m to 368 m
- Production zone
- 376,304 ha
Contains 2 appellations (outlined on the zone map)
Оряховица, Шивачево
Worked out from the boundaries (smallest container first). They follow whole communes, so a neighbour sharing a commune can show up here too.
Boundary drawn from whole communes, so it is a little larger than the legal zone. Boundary: Eurac Research PDO inventory (CC0). Country outlines: Natural Earth. Dots on the zone map are the vineyard points used for climate.
Showing every colour The colour filter changes the rules and grapes. Climate, vintages and soils describe the vineyards, so they stay the same.
01 · What the law says
The rules
Limits on grapes, yields, ripeness and ageing that every wine labelled Нова Загора must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
2 varieties · Нова Загора Quality sparkling rosé wine – Pinot Noir, Нова Загора Quality sparkling wine – Chardonnay
14 varieties ·
Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Dimiat, Mavrud, Merlot, Muscat Ottonel, Pamid, Pinot Noir, Ranna Melnishka Loza, Rubin, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Traminer
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
1,112
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
umbrella; Moser; mid-wire bilateral cordon
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 18.3 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,779 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 236 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.3 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,779
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 420 mm
- Of 709 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 107 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 270 m; Vineyard point 2, 165 m; Vineyard point 3, 218 m; Vineyard point 4, 192 m; Vineyard point 5, 335 m), moved to each point's height from the model's terrain. Indices that need daily data are not captured yet. How the climate figures are made.
Lower confidence:Monthly reanalysis in moderately complex terrain; not yet checked against a weather station.
Closest climates in the database
Picked by the data, not by hand: the profiles nearest on season warmth (counted twice), degree days, rain, ripening-month nights and day–night range. Neighbours within 30 km are left out, as they share the same weather.
1. Coteaux Varois en ProvenceVery similarCompared with Нова Загора: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. MontefalcoVery similarCompared with Нова Загора: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. VentouxVery similarCompared with Нова Загора: same season warmth, similar rain.
Growing-season temperature
Growing degree days
Growing-season rain
03 · Year by year
35 vintages
Each column is one growing season: heat above or below the 1991–2020 average, and rain at harvest. Pick a year for the details.
Warmer than averageCooler than averageHarvest rain (Sep–Oct)Average harvest rain, 107 mm
2025
- Growing-season temp.
- Growing degree days
- Harvest rain
- Growing-season rain
- September nights
- Hot days and frosts
Seasons are labelled by harvest year (April–October). Year-to-year changes from ERA5-Land; tested against station records in Alto Adige (r = 0.94 for season temperature at Bolzano). Rain varies more locally, so treat single-season rain with some caution. Vintage ratings, harvest dates and frost or hail events have places in the data model but are not loaded yet.
04 · Where the numbers come from
Sources
- A geospatial inventory of regulatory information for wine protected designations of origin in Europe · Candiago et al., Scientific Data 9, 394 (2022); Eurac Research · CC0
- ERA5-Land monthly averaged data (reanalysis-era5-land-monthly-means) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), Climate Data Store · CC BY 4.0 (Copernicus licence)
- OpenStreetMap vineyard areas (landuse=vineyard), from Geofabrik country extracts · OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0
- Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (AWS open data tiles) · European Space Agency / Copernicus · Copernicus DEM licence
- Single document: Нова Загора (Official Journal C 141, 24.4.2023; and the product specification 'PDO_Nova Zagora.pdf' from the EU register) · European Union, Official Journal (C series) · EU law (Commission reuse policy)
- Appellation nesting worked out from boundaries (pipeline/build_nesting.py) · Vinous, from the Eurac PDO boundaries · CC0 (source data)
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: Still wines may have 0-4 g/l sugar, or up to 9 g/l when total acidity is no more than 2 g/l below residual sugar (recorded as the 9 g/l maximum). Sparkling wines may be made in every sweetness category from brut nature to sweet, and the document does not state the sparkling method; the rosé blend's varieties are not specified. Training is umbrella, Moser or mid-wire bilateral cordon, up to 54 buds per vine and at most 450 vines per decare; a microregion or massif may appear on the label if all grapes come from it. The national product specification adds that quality sparkling wines are made by the classic method in bottle with at least 9 months' bottle ageing, and that vinification takes place in the area; it does not list a white wine from Pinot Noir, whose dry extract and sugar limits are taken from its white-wine rules.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.